


International Women's Day Ficlets

by kisahawklin



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Criminal Minds, Leverage, White Collar
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-08
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short ficlets written for International Women's Day: Parker from Leverage, June from White Collar, Buffy & Faith, Jenny Calendar, and Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and JJ from Criminal Minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Parker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts), [Tygermama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tygermama/gifts), [saekhwa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saekhwa/gifts), [havocthecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/gifts), [Petra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/gifts), [Spillingvelvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spillingvelvet/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Джун](https://archiveofourown.org/works/314078) by [Helga Winter (hwinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwinter/pseuds/Helga%20Winter)



Parker worked alone because it was simplest. It wasn't a matter of trust, it was just a matter of statistics.

If things went wrong on a job and it was just her, then she got herself out, one way or another. If someone else was involved, the whole plan changed. Whose screw-up was it? Could the other person get themselves out of trouble? Could she rely on her intel?

Her work was a straight line. Her eyes, her intel. Her plan, her heist. Her jump, her rig. Other people didn't introduce another line, they introduced a spiderweb and suddenly the simple clarity was all gone.

Working with a team is complicated. It's fuzzy around the edges. It relies on her belief in other people – their skills, their information, that she'll be able to tell when they're really in trouble.

She still sees the simple clarity of the job sometimes, when she's on her own, doing what she's best at, the only connection the tiny bud in her ear. More and more, though, she's doing other things, caught in the cobwebs, and she's starting to think maybe she likes it here.


	2. June

June hums. To herself, mostly, and she doesn't ever realize she's doing it unless someone (the dog and Neal being the most likely candidates) start singing along with her.

There is always music; she wonders, sometimes, what it's like for people who don't have a constant soundtrack in the back of their minds, music to accompany everything they do. Maybe they have something else: numbers, like her husband or art, like Neal. She knows a woman who has stories in the back of her mind all the time; maybe everyone's backdrop is different.

She listened to music constantly when she was young – partially because that was the world she lived in, that was her life, but partially because that's who spoke to her, Billie and Ella and sometimes Dean and Frank and Sammy, too. They were the thread of her life, always with her, their tunes always winding their way through her house and work and her own throat.

Later the music was so ingrained it never stopped, even when her ears no longer heard it constantly. Her inner ear plays the music back, comforting and comfortable, and she hums. Sometimes, she even sings.


	3. Buffy & Faith

"How are you not completely bored?" Faith asked.

Buffy rolled her eyes. True, Sunnydale wasn't LA, but it's hardly Backwater, Iowa.

"Oh, I don't know," Buffy answered. "The Hellmouth keeps me busy."

"That's what I mean," Faith whined, flopping back onto Buffy's bed. "It's the same old, same old, every single day, nothing interesting - there hasn't been a good apocalypse in ages."

Buffy shrugged. "They're on a schedule, I think. No more than one a year, and we had one just six months ago."

"Boring," Faith said. "Bored, bored, bored. Let's blow this pop stand and find someone interesting to do."

Buffy rolled her eyes again. "What, you want to find an apocalypse somewhere else? There's plenty to do right here."

"Plenty of boring to do right here," Faith muttered, closing her eyes and lying still. So still she looked dead.

"All right," Buffy said, shaking Faith until she opened her eyes again. "Road trip."

"That's what I'm talking about," Faith answered, off the bed and out the door before Buffy can even ask, "Where to?"


	4. Jenny Calendar

Jenny knows words. She understands the power of them, collected in musty old books. She understands other things too – code, numbers, colors, metals, herbs, crystals, the moon. She knows there are those who think she and her kind are undisciplined. They're wrong. She's a pioneer – creating new ways to engage with the energy that's all around, inventing new ways to look at information and power. She's a translator, too – old languages to new, mystical energies to electrical, old traditions to new rituals. She knows many things, most beyond the ken of those who rely on words and musty old books.


	5. Willow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow reminisces.

It's not the magic that's the final straw. Well, they never really knew the largest part of the magic anyway, they just thought it was teenage rebellion, black clothes and paganism. How wrong they were.

No, it's the girls. Willow thinks it's because of Buffy. Her parents have never been the sort to invite her friends over; they didn't know Xander's name until sixth grade. Buffy they heard about but never even met. She's been changing since Buffy showed up, and the witchcraft, that was one thing. But Willow dating Tara, that. That was unacceptable.

They liked Oz (who didn't like Oz?) – though Willow has to wonder if they would like him as much if they knew he was a werewolf. They missed him when he was gone almost as much as she did.

She brought Tara home with her once, before they were even dating, and Willow's mother gave her the stinkeye the entire time. Willow wouldn't have been able to pick out a pair of lesbians slow dancing in the middle of a gay bar; apparently her mother had impeccable gaydar. When Willow finally came out, her mother was ready and cut her off before she could even get Tara's name out.

It's not like she wasn't already mostly living in the dorms; there wasn't that much out of her room she even wanted. She and Buffy snuck in (thank god for Buffy, the only one who didn't trip over herself when Willow started dating Tara) and took the last few bits of her clothing and the box of sentimental stuff under the bed. She left everything else behind and wasn't too sad to see it go.

She doesn't think of them much anymore, hardly at all except when she thinks about Tara, and how they never knew her, and how they never showed up at her funeral. She wipes away the tears and closes the lid on her little box of memories, the only thing left from that house, those people, her childhood.


	6. JJ

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The CIA is different.

The CIA is different, JJ realizes as soon as she is there. Still busy, god knows there's enough paperwork to keep any twenty agencies afloat for decades, but stressful too. Not that the BAU wasn't stressful, just that it was stress with a purpose. They were catching killers and rapists and saving lives; the results and relief from the stress were immediate as soon as the case was over. This stress, it's insidious and never-ending, never leading to closure, just more work, more stress.

She misses her team, her life, everything but the hours that she now spends with Henry, the one bright spot in a world of paperwork misery.


End file.
